A big disappointment for this Del Toro fan

Rating: 4/10 (15 December 2013)

I generally like Guillermo Del Toro's movies, so this one came as a huge disappointment to me. So many things not to like: 1.The Kaiju are WAY overdesigned, with much too much bioluminescence effects – it looks like they've come equipped with running lights. And glow-in-the-dark breath. So they look kind of silly, at least the parts you can make out. 2. Speaking of Kaiju, there's no buildup to any sort of 'reveal' at all. We see them almost immediately (in video footage, no less) the film begins. Even the original "Gojirah" filmmakers back in the 1950s knew enough to keep the big 'G' offscreen for a little while, thus heightening audience anticipation. "Pacific Rim" blows its wad in the first minute or so. 3. And speaking again of the Kaiju, there's too many of them, they're very much alike in most ways, and their origin is unnecessarily explained (and, perhaps, over-explained). There's no star of this monster show, as it were – just a succession of variations-on-a-theme. 4. A common fault of apocalyptic sci-fi action pictures is that the characters seem to be having too good of a time, considering their circumstances and the stakes involved. Same thing here, with only Idris Elba's 'Marshall Pentecost' character displaying any sort of gravitas. 5. Like their monster counterparts, the giant robot 'Jaegers' are also overdesigned, and of such an enormous scale that it's hard for the viewer to figure out their overall form and capabilities. This is made doubly obfuscated by having most of the battles take place hip-deep in the ocean water, at night, and in the rain.
Despite my problems with the monsters and the robots, the production design on the rest of the show is pretty fantastic. I especially love the rusty, dented, and otherwise bashed-about look of the Jaeger command centers/maintenance depots, which are perfect combination of fantasy tech and down-and-dirty verisimilitude. The depiction of war zone Hong Kong is likewise carried off perfectly.
It's in the Hong Kong-based part of the story that "Pacific Rim" could have found it's real heart. The street-level view of a rampaging Kaiju is much more terrifying than the Jaeger-pilot view, or the audience's third-person view from 40 feet above sea level. The civilian perspective of life right behind front lines of the Kaiju war is much more interesting than the Jaeger barracks infighting and personality clashes. Ron Perlman's 'Hannibal Chau' character, trying to get rich quick by selling Kaiju body parts to collectors, is a classic war zone hustler character with roots going all the way back to "Casablanca". I would've preferred much more life-during-wartime intrigue, rather than the daddy issues and testosterone-driven competitiveness going on back at the barracks.
The film didn't do all that well at the US box office, and I wonder if Giant Monsters/Giant Robots is simply a trope that simply doesn't resonate as much with American audiences as it does in Japanese pop culture. From Dracula through Hannibal Lecter, we prefer our monsters on a more personal scale (hell, even "King Kong" was basically a love story) and in a form we can identify with. Same with the robots – Robby, C-3 PO, Roy Batty, Commander Data. Maybe "Pacific Rim" was always the purview of a small coterie of American otaku, but everybody forgot that.
Guillermo Del Toro has long expressed an interest in bringing H.P. Lovecraft to the screen. (His adaptation of "At the Mountains of Madness" was beaten into production by the similarly-themed "Prometheus".) Somebody at Warner Bros. should have had their thinking cap on; with a little bit of rewriting, "Pacific Rim" could have been the greatest Lovecraftian story ever brought to the screen. Now both of Del Toro's dreams are severely crippled – perhaps mortally so. Too bad.